1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to managing operation of database servers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most current enterprise and world wide web applications are data driven. These applications depend on data such as user data, electronic mail system data and other data to provide services and respond to client requests. Many enterprise database solutions incorporating one or more databases exist to support such applications. The reliability and performance of the enterprise and web applications depends on the performance of the driving database.
When a malfunction occurs in a database, the malfunction is usually detected in a peripheral application before it is detected in the database itself. For example, if a database does not respond to a particular client request, a database driven web page may not operate properly. A user or other some monitoring service will typically detect the degraded web page performance. After initial deployment, databases can experience degradation in performance or not respond to any requests at all. These problems are generally detectable, but the sheer numbers of database servers in a database system make their performance difficult to monitor. Additionally, it is difficult to determine the cause of the performance degradation. Upon being diagnosed, database problems are usually due to incorrectly configured or mismatched databases across the farm of servers.
When a database does not operate properly, it requires time to repair the database. During this time, a system of databases is put under more strain to compensate for the lost database. The applications driven by the database system may suffer from poor performance before the database malfunction is detected and compete for a smaller pool of resources while the database is being repaired. It is important to maintain database system health and detect a down or degraded database server as soon as possible.